Mr. Speaker, I want to make a few comments on the amendment because it is an opportunity for us to reflect on the role of the other place in general, but also to reflect on the irony of a procedure established by the bill whereby the other place would have a decisive role to play in something having to do with elections.
The amendment does not completely leave out the Senate. It talks about consulting the other place. That is appropriate. We can consult the other place. We can consult Canadians. We can do a lot of consulting. The question is whether or not the other place, which is an appointed chamber and not an elected chamber, should have a decisive say in something having to do with elections.
There are two ways, it seems to me, that the argument for the amendment can be established. One is simply the argument based on democratic principle, that being the fact that elections have to do with democracy and the Senate, being an appointed body, should by definition keep its nose out of things having to do with elections out of respect for the fact that senators are not elected themselves.
The second reason is something which I suppose has always been the case but has become more aggravated in recent years, that is, generally election law is something that is decided on by all the parties in the House of Commons through a House of Commons committee or by consultation with parties outside the House. By involving the Senate in this way, we are basically saying that after all the work is done among the five parties in the House, and perhaps even after consultation with parties that have not been able to elect people to the House of Commons, a decisive role is going to be given to a chamber where really only two parties are represented. I know there is now an Alliance senator but that does not really take very much away from my argument.
The fact is that the Senate is a chamber made up of Liberals and Conservatives. It is made up of people who have been appointed over the years by those parties that have formed the government in the country. When the Liberals are in power, Liberals are appointed. When the Conservatives were in power, Conservatives were appointed. Sometimes there is the odd exception and an independent is appointed, but by and large the Senate is a chamber made up of people who belong to the two political parties in this country that have formed governments over the years.
Now that we have a five party House, it seems a little odd to me that a chamber or a House in which three of the parties are unrepresented should have this kind of role to play. That is one of the reasons I think this amendment is just not in order procedurally and also politically.
I listened with interest to the apologia for the Senate that was given by the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. He was being a faithful Conservative and defending many of his colleagues in the Senate. That is understandable, but it seems to me the argument he made, which is that there are good people in the Senate and they do good work, is just not sufficient. It is true that there are good people in the Senate and they do good work. It is not the work they do: it is the role they have.
The Senate has a decisive constitutional role in our democracy which we say is inappropriate given the fact that senators are appointed. There are all kinds of people throughout the country in various contexts who are good people and do good work, but they do not have the constitutional power that the people in the Senate have, who are good people and do good work. If they want to be good people and do good work they can do it somewhere else. They can do it where they do not have the constitutional power that should be vested only in people who are elected.
That is our point and it is the reason why for so many years the NDP and, before that, the CCF have been for the abolition of the Senate. It is an affront to our democratic principles to have this appointed body in our midst with that much power. I say that with all due respect to the many senators whom I know who are very dedicated to the country and do very good work. That is beside the point, and that is the point I am trying to make.
It may be that abolishing the Senate is not on and that reforming the Senate, as many have suggested over the years, is what we need to look at. We in the NDP have been open to that. We supported Meech Lake and we supported the Charlottetown accord even though those accords did not abolish the Senate, but because they went some way toward reforming the Senate and making it democratic or in some cases such as Meech at least making it more responsive to provincial input and in Charlottetown actually making it elected.
We in the NDP supported that kind of Senate reform. We are not absolutist in our demand that the Senate be abolished but we are absolutist in our demand that it be changed and in our demand that ultimately the Senate be made a democratic Chamber rather than an appointed Chamber.
It is true that one of the ironies of recent Canadian political history is that the very same party that has made a political career out of exploiting the need for Senate reform, particularly as it relates to western and regional alienation, is the same party that in my judgment and in the judgment of others has actually stood in the way of Senate reform on a couple of occasions. While I am sure that there are people in the reform alliance political constituency who genuinely wish for Senate reform, it almost seems to me sometimes that if we ever did have reform, it would be a disaster for them because it would mean that this great hobby horse of theirs would be eliminated.
There is some evidence to back this up, because on two occasions there was opportunity for Senate reform. In Meech the provinces were going to be given the opportunity to provide a list that the Prime Minister would have to pick from in order to appoint senators, until such time as there was genuine Senate reform, so that there would be pressure on the federal government to reform the Senate. If there was no reform, then the provinces in perpetuity would have the power to influence who became senators in this way. However, that was not on. That was another occasion for outrage on the part of people in the reform alliance political constituency. Then in Charlottetown we had another opportunity.
I think these things are worth saying because it may well be that when the history of our democratic institutions is written, unless something dramatic and hopeful happens in the next little while, the very people who have made so much out of wanting to reform the Senate will be shown to have been the people who stood in the way of that very reform.